Coaching for Writers

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Today, guest author Anthony Hains talks about writing
his new horror novel Dead Works. If you like a good mix of psychological
suspense and supernatural horror, you’ll like Anthony Hains’ stories. I also
enjoyed his novel, Birth Offering.

The final version of Dead Works is only remotely similar to
the original version. My initial plot for the novel involved the mishaps of
ghost hunters exploring a 100 year old mansion situated in a glorious setting
on Long Island Sound in New York. One of the characters had a back story that
involved him in therapy as a child - an account that may have topped out at 800
words. So, this wasn’t a huge focus, but rather an interesting tidbit to
illustrate a character.

The only problem with this
back story idea was that I couldn’t shake it from my mind. The issues involving
the therapy became more complex, even if I didn’t start out with the intention
of putting them on paper. It was only a matter of time until this back story
became more interesting than the original plot. I realized that I needed to jettison the ghost hunter notion and go with the
kid-in-therapy narrative.

Since I am a psychologist
and a professor of counseling psychology, I immediately knew the angle I was
going to take. The main character was going to be a graduate student – a
counseling psychologist in training. The young man would be in a practicum
class where students are placed in a clinical setting and conduct therapy under
the supervision of an on-site psychologist and a university instructor. After
all, I live this stuff on a daily basis. I have taught at least one practicum
class a year for the past 25 years. I know how students think and act. And,
even though it has been a very long time, I still remember what it is like to
be a graduate student. The client, of course, needed to be a kid – again, no
problems since my professional area of focus is pediatric psychology and I have
been studying and interacting with adolescents most of my professional career.
While this group can be a pain in the butt for many professionals, I rather
enjoy the population.

The challenge came with
making the process authentic without losing a reader. Losing a reader can
happen a couple of ways with this type of narrative. First, if I wrote an
accurate account of therapy, the layperson would become increasingly
frustrated. Unlike screen portrayals of therapy, there are rarely (if ever)
those dramatic eureka moments when the client gains insight and the problem is
solved within minutes. In most cases, the problem and the goals of therapy are
identified early, and the difficult work involves the client learning and
practicing new ways of coping or behaving to address personal concerns. This
takes time, depending on the nature of the problem.

Second, if I did go for the
dramatic denouement and make the therapy passages unrealistic or simplistic, I
would run the risk of personal embarrassment if my colleagues or students
actually read my fiction (so far, none have as far as I know). Pure vanity (or
maybe self-respect?) on my part, I know.

So, I provided excerpts of
five therapy sessions involving my graduate student protagonist, Eric, and his
thirteen year old client, Greg. I deleted some of the more mundane interactions
between them, and stuck to the more “thrilling” proceedings. By the way, the
boy sees ghosts, so much of the interactions involve the kid learning how to
make sense of these events. I portrayed my student character as being competent
at this level of training. He makes all the “correct” responses in therapy and
his inner narrative is consistent with what graduate students might be
thinking.

Finally, you can’t get
around the fact that this is a ghost story and the topic of therapy involves
seeing ghosts. Most problems addressed in actual therapy are not
“other-worldly”. The terrors, fears, and concerns of clients are grounded in daily
realities. Sometimes these horrors exceed our experience, but we know about
them anyway: abuse, addiction, suicide… You don’t need ghosts when you have
these things to deal with. Nonetheless, every once in a while something rather
strange appears on the radar screen in therapy. I can think of three or four
times this has happened in my work. How do you address it? There is no one way
of doing it, but I think Dead Works
provides some indications. Curious? I hope you read Dead Works to find out.

Saturday, August 16, 2014

My latest guest writer is
someone whose work I’ve been a fan of since the 1980s, when Eric Red was
writing screenplays and directing movies. Two movies he wrote I consider
classics. You may have seen The Hitcher
(1986) and the vampire flick Near Dark
(1987). When I was studying screenwriting at UT Austin back in 1989, my
professor talked about Eric Red and his screenplays, and we discussed The Hitcher in depth. I admired Red’s
early success as a writer. In 1991, I went to the theater to see the horror
movie Body Parts and there on the big
screen was Written and Directed by Eric Red. Mr. Red went on to write and direct
some other recognizable horror movies, including Bad Moon and 100 Feet, to
name a few.

After making his mark on the
movie business, Eric Red has gone on to write comic book series, graphic novels
and channeled his talents into writing horror short stories and novels. I was
thrilled when he joined the team of authors at my publisher Samhain Horror. Now,
with the release of his latest Sci-Fi monster novel, It
Waits Below, I’m honored to have Eric Red as a guest on my blog as he shares
his wisdom about researching for a horror novel.

What does research matter in
horror?

You’d think doing research
as an author would be less important for a horror novel than other literary
genres, because monsters and the supernatural aren’t real—or at least some
think so. But in my opinion, the more realistic the everyday details, technology,
ordinance, hardware, professional behavior, and science, the more the reader believes
what’s going on, increasing their involvement in the story. Even though the
reader knows a horror story is unreal, I believe the greater
the verisimilitude, that on an unconscious level people believe what is happening
just a little bit more—and it’s that much more scary. It all comes down to
suspension of disbelief.

I knew two things before
writing It Waits Below, my new
Samhain novel about the crew of a three-man Deep Submergence Vehicle who
encounter an alien life form at the bottom of the ocean. One, the book had to
be technically accurate. Two, I didn’t know shit about subs, and needed
technical advisers who did. With the help of The National Academy Of Sciences,
I was introduced to one of the top Alvin sub pilots in the world and his wife,
a prominent oceanographer and microbiologist. For months they gave me
invaluable help explaining how these subs are operated and what the crews
encounter many miles down. They answered a million questions and shared
fascinating materials that provided inspiration for some of the most terrifying
scenes in the book. Later, I would run finished scenes by them and ask if this
could happen or that could happen. Without the help of my technical advisers,
the novel would have been about as convincing as an old Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea TV episode.

Some writers are
research-wonks, but originally I wasn’t. When I started writing scripts for
movies like The Hitcher—road
thrillers set in a spare highway iconography—what the hell did you need to
know? Get a map of Texas. Find out the makes of the police cars and what kind
of guns they carried. The rest was pure imagination. But over the years, as my
subject matter grew more involved, so did the research entailed. What I
discovered was some of the most creative ideas often sprang from the research.

For instance, in Containment, my IDW zombies-in-space
graphic novel about to be re-republished, I had to research long-distance space
exploration and immediately realized the movie cliché of these cavernous space
arks is a total myth. The fact is everything would need to be built as small and
compact as possible to conserve weight and mass for propulsion. The creative
opportunity was since the story involved cryogenic zombies on a spaceship, the
more cramped and claustrophobic the surroundings, the greater the tension and
suspense.

In It Waits Below, the alien comes to earth and ends up at the bottom
of the ocean on a falling asteroid that destroys a Spanish treasure ship in the
1800’s. Centuries later, a salvage dive by treasure hunters sets the story in
motion. Again, a little research paid off. I hunted down some footage of meteor
strikes and was astonished by one event filmed not too long ago in the Eastern
Block by witnesses on DV cams and iPhones from every conceivable vantage point.
An actual large asteroid impact didn’t look like I imagined, or had seen in
movies—it was a pulsing light over the world that turned in day to night to day
to night and back again; utterly apocalyptic and chilling. So the crashing
meteor that hits the treasure gallon in the opening of the novel was described
in just such a manner.

Even when you know the
technical realities of the subject matter, you inevitably take certain
liberties. In It Waits Below, for
dramatic purposes, I needed a second chamber in the DSV that houses a specially
designed diving suit—people have to run and hide from aliens somewhere in a fifteen-foot
sub, after all—and neither of these exists in actual submersibles. Still, I ran
it all by my Alvin sub pilot consultant, and made it as “speculatively
accurate” as possible.

The space monster
stuff—well, that I made up!

-------------------------

Here’s the synopsis for It Waits Below:

It waits no more!

In the 1800s, an asteroid carrying an extraterrestrial life form crashed to
earth and sunk a Spanish treasure ship. Now, a trio of salvage experts dives a
three-man sub to the deepest part of the ocean to recover the sunken gold.
There, they confront a nightmarish alien organism beyond comprehension, which
has waited for over a century to get to the surface. It finally has its chance.

As their support ship on the
surface is ambushed by deadly modern-day pirates, the crew of the stranded sub
battles for their very lives against a monster no one onEarth
has seen before.

Eric Red is a Los Angeles
based motion picture screenwriter, director and author. His original scripts
include The Hitcher for Tri Star, Near Dark for DeLaurentiis Entertainment
Group, Blue Steel for MGM and the
western TheLast Outlaw for HBO. He directed and wrote the crime film Cohen And Tate for Hemdale, Body Parts for Paramount, Undertow for Showtime, Bad Moon for Warner Bros. and the ghost
story 100 Feet for Grand Illusions
Entertainment.

Mr. Red’s first novel, a
dark coming-of-age tale about teenagers called Don’t Stand So Close, is available from SST Publications. His
second and third novels, a werewolf western called The Guns Of Santa Sangre and a science fiction monster novel called
It Waits Below, are available from
Samhain Publishing. His fourth novel, a serial killer thriller called White Knuckle, will be published by
Samhain in 2015. A collection of eighteen of his horror short stories titled Toll Road will be published by SST
Publications in 2015.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Today’s
guest post is by Hunter Shea, one of the rising stars in the field of horror
fiction. He’s written several great novels and novellas that every horror fan
must read. If you like fun stories with scary monsters and creepy ghosts, I
highly recommend you check out the books of Hunter Shea. Here, he’s talking
about his latest thriller,The Montauk Monster,which just released in time for the summer.

Have
you heard the one about the Everglades skunk apes who got a writer a two-book
thriller deal?

Sounds
insane, right? Even more so because it’s true.

My
debut thriller, The Montauk Monster,
came about as strangely as the cryptids that descend on a Long Island town in
the book. It’s funny how one set of creatures led to a breakneck tale of
another.

Here’s
how it went down and how you just never know where life will take you. A couple
of years ago, I was watching a marathon of the show Bar Rescue. My editor at Samhain, the legendary Don D’Auria,
emailed me around midnight to ask if I had any novellas I’d like to publish. Of
course, I didn’t, but in a flash I had this idea about a Bigfoot novel set in
the Everglades. Yeah, Bar Rescue
marathons and lack of sleep make for great creative inspiration. Don said to go
for it, and I set to writing.

A
month later, I turned in my manuscript, Swamp
Monster Massacre, a love note to the B monster movies I loved and still
adore. SMM is filled with a family of angry skunk apes intent on murdering a
band of hapless humans who crashed their airboat in the deep of the Everglades.
The book is a hell of a lot of twisted fun and has been my most popular to
date.

Flash
forward to the following year. I get an email from a guy who says he’s an
editor. Apparently, he was trolling for ‘new talent’ and had loaded up his
kindle with hundreds of ebooks. When all was said and done, he said SMM was the
one that stood out and he wanted to know if I’d be interested in working with
him.

Now,
at first, I thought this was some kind of scam. So, I checked him and his
company out. Oh, he was legit all right. I replied that I was interested, and
we got to talking. The man made me laugh and we found out we shared the same
love for Roger Corman, Irwin Allen and loads of other stuff. Again, I was asked
if I had any ideas for a thriller.

I
had recently been looking at pictures of supposed Montauk Monsters, strange
animal carcasses that have been washing up on the shores of Long Island, NY. I
quickly hashed a story concept together. To my amazement, he loved it and we
were off to the races. To convince the senior editors in the project, he even
printed pictures of the corpses and articles! And sure enough, I not only got the
deal, but a two-book deal.

Right
away, I started working on the book, powering through it, creating non-stop
action with plausible backstories. It was a challenge and a thrill. Best of
all, the whole thing was an unexpected gift from above.

Now
here it is, already listed as Publisher Weekly’stop reads for summer and in a second
printing before the first copy hit the shelves.

And
it’s all because of those lovable, murderous skunk apes. Who knew? As R.L.
Stine told me (along with the crowd of other writers who paid to hear him),
never say no. That proposal you take on could be the one that changes your
life.

Hunter
Shea is the author of the pulse-pounding new thriller, The MontaukMonster, named as one of the Best Reads of Summer by Publishers Weekly.

His
horror novels to date are: The Waiting,
Sinister Entity, Swamp MonsterMassacre, Evil Eternal and Forest of Shadows. His obsession with
all things horrific has led him to real life exploration of the paranormal,
interviews with exorcists and other things that would keep most people awake
with the lights on. Hunter is also the proud and slightly demented co-host of
the Monster Men video podcast. A native New Yorker all his life, he waits with
Biblical patience for the Mets to win a World Series. You can read about his
latest travails, preview and purchase his books, watch Monster Men episodes and
communicate with him without the need for a Ouija board at www.huntershea.com.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

My guest author today
is Anthony Hains, who wrote a great horror novel, BirthOffering.

Brian: Hi Anthony, welcome to my blog. Tell us about Birth Offering. What’s the basic
premise? And what compelled you to write this story?

Anthony: Birth
Offering is about a fourteen year old boy named Ryan Perry who has just
recently lost his father. He and his mom move to his grandmother’s coastal home
in South Carolina for a change of pace. Ryan isn’t thrilled with the idea, but
what can he do? Not long after the Perry’s arrival, Ryan is haunted by a
malevolent entity masquerading as his double. The hauntings become increasingly
dangerous with Ryan suffering injuries. It becomes clear that this specter of
ancient evil is intent on destroying Ryan. As if this wasn’t enough, Ryan
encounters an additional threat: two menacing boys and their caretaker somehow
connected to this other twin. Ryan soon realizes that in order to save himself
and his family, he must confront this unimaginable evil head on.

My inspiration for Birth
Offering came when we were vacationing on Edisto Island, South Carolina. We
(my wife, daughter, and I) spent a week there in August of 1995. At the time,
Edisto was not a crowd favorite like Kiawah Island, Hilton Head, and Isle of
Palms. Whole sections were undeveloped with beach houses and one relatively
small resort area. For all that I know, it may still be that way, which makes
it the best kept secret of the South Carolina coast. I hope so. One day we came
across the most beautiful road… unpaved and densely lined with live oak trees
that were shrouded with Spanish moss. Beyond the live oaks, there were
palmettos and other tropical kinds of bushes and trees. The impact of the
vegetation was practically cathedral-like. The oak branches met across the
road, and the sunlight barely peeked through the hanging moss. It was
breathtaking. My wife proclaimed it beautiful, and the only thing I could think
about was, “wouldn’t this be a cool setting for a passage in a horror novel?” I
visualized someone on the road being stalked, and then chased by something in
the vegetation which was gradually working its way towards the road. That
imagery stuck with me for years, and ended up in Birth Offering – almost exactly like I had remembered it years
earlier.

Brian: The islands off the coast of South Carolina sound
intriguing. I’ll have to travel there and explore them. Is anything in your novel
based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?

Anthony: Fortunately, the work is entirely based on
imagination. Of course, there are minor personal experiences that make it into
the book – like seeing the road in South Carolina which gave me the initial
idea.

Brian: I’m always amazed what you can come up with when you
tap into your imagination. What kind of research did you do?

Anthony: I tried to draw on my knowledge as a psychologist
to inform the emotions and behavior of my characters. So, I didn’t have to
research that aspect. For instance, my main character is a 14-year-old boy. I
am a pediatric psychologist, and have spent my career researching various
issues related to adolescence. However, when I came to sections of the novel
that involved some aspect of the plot that couldn’t be addressed by psychology
(and there were many), I was constantly searching the internet and trying some
personal mini-experiments to see if a certain sequence of events was possible.

Brian: Do you have a specific writing style?

Anthony: Since I am a psychologist and a university
professor, this means my writing style is that of an academic researcher.
Specifically, for the past thirty plus years, I have been writing empirical
research articles in APA format (American Psychological Association). In order
to write fiction, I had to be on my guard not to slip into scholarly manuscript
writing and instead wear my fiction writing hat. I am not sure what I would
call that style – since I am still trying to master it.

Brian: What books have influenced your life most?

Anthony: The most significant influences in the realm of
horror are probably the earliest ones. In my senior year of high school, two
novels came out nearly simultaneously: The
Other by Thomas Tryon and The
Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. While I had always been a horror movie
and monster movie fanatic as a kid, these two books more than any others
initiated me into the joys of reading horror. I still regard them as classics.
Since then I’ve enjoyed Stephen King for the most part, especially his earlier
works and, strangely enough, his very recent works.

In terms of non-horror, I can rattle off a number of titles
that moved me at the time I read them and still do today: To Kill a Mockingbird, The
Great Gatsby, and In Cold Blood.
Interestingly enough, I read these in high school as well. More recently, I
have enjoyed the three ‘Colorado’ novels written by Kent Haruf. His latest, Benediction, is an emotionally powerful
novel. Finally, Skippy Dies by Paul
Murray is probably one of the best books about adolescents. It is
simultaneously hilarious and troubling – and informed my fictional writings of
teenage characters.

Brian: Describe your path to becoming a published author.

Like many others, this was something I always wanted to do,
but I never saw it as a career. However, the initial “nudge” occurred way back
in my senior year in college when I took a short fiction writing course. For
decades after that class, I always tossed around plots in my head, and even
attempted to write once or twice. But, I could never sit still long enough.
Finally, about five years ago, I took the plunge and began writing fiction for
real.

Things really took off when we became empty nesters. I was
able to schedule regular times for writing and always had a plan to write a
certain number of words a day. I wasn’t focused on publishing the book, believe
it or not. I wanted to see if I could actually complete the task. Once I finished
a first draft of Birth Offering, I
thought “why not?” So I started investigating the idea of trying to publish the
book.

Needless to say, I was naive. The process was long and time
consuming – with tons of rejections for agents and publishers. Finally,
Damnation Books said ‘yes’.

Brian: Is writing your career or a hobby?

Anthony: I have a career as a
psychologist and professor. So, I cannot say I have a career as a writer too.
When I think of the word ‘hobby’, though, I think pastime.I wouldn’t say that either. I take it
seriously, and plan to continue.

Brian: How do you market your work? What avenues have you
found to work best for your genre?

Anthony: Like millions of others trying to promote their
work, I have turned to social media. I’ve created a web page where I attempt to
blog fairly regularly. I review other horror novels and novellas in my blog, in an effort to “give
back to the field”.I’ve joined GoodReads
and try to take part in some horror-themed discussion groups. My only problem
is that I do not have enough time to regularly contribute to those discussions.
There are some very knowledgeable readers in those groups, and I have learned a
lot from them. In addition, you will find me on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, etc.

Brian: Can you tell us something you enjoy doing when not
writing?

Anthony: When I’m not writing, I enjoy
relaxing with my family and reading (often horror stories, but not always).

Brian: Do you have any advice for other writers?

Anthony: I wish I had some profound
advice for other writers, but I really don’t. The cliché responses are the best
I can come up with. Stick to it, don’t give up, carve out time for you to write
on a regular basis – every day if possible, set a goal… Those are the things
that have kept me on task.

Brian: Is there anything that you would like to say to your
readers and fans?

Anthony: Thank you for taking the chance to read an unknown
writer’s work.

Brian: Birth Offering
was a great debut novel. Do you have a new book coming out soon? Tell us about
it.

Anthony: I just completed the editing process of Dead Works with my editor at Damnation
Books. Dead Works tells the tale of a
teenager in therapy because he is seeing ghosts. I realize this sounds like the
movie The Sixth Sense, but the plot
is considerably different. My professional life contributed a chunk of the
source material. The psychologist character is a graduate student in counseling
psychology who was working on his PhD. The young therapist is doing his
practicum placement at the university counseling center and he is assigned a
teenage client who is seeing ‘things’.I
regularly teach a Practicum course where the students are being supervised
while they provide therapy. Much of the context for the novel takes place
within the counseling relationship between the teen and the student therapist;
the story is told from the graduate student’s point of view. The book was a lot
of fun to write.

Brian: Sounds like a
great story. I’m looking forward to when Dead
Works releases. Anthony, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing about
your books. For readers who have yet to discover Anthony Hains’ horror fiction,
check out Birth Offering which is now
available on Amazon,
BarnesandNoble.com
and wherever books are sold.

Anthony Hains is a
university professor in counseling psychology, with a specialization in
pediatric psychology – his research involves working with youth who have a
chronic illness. He is married with a daughter in college. Birth Offering his is first novel.

Contributing Writer

Now Available

Audio Book

Free Short Story

Now Available

Now Available

Now Available

Now Available

Deutsche Buche

Follow by Email

Followers

About Me

Welcome!
Thanks for visiting. I'm a fiction writer who lives in Texas in the wonderful city of Dallas. I write supernatural horror. I enjoy mixing genres with history, romance, mystery, and nail-biting, dark suspense. My books are DEAD OF WINTER, SHADOWS IN THE MIST, THE WITCHING HOUSE and THE DEVIL'S WOODS. I've also published some short stories, including THE GIRL FROM THE BLOOD COVEN. When not writing, I enjoy world travel, hiking, kayaking, reading, movies, and watching sports. My mission is to entertain and scare millions of readers around the world.

Read the Electrifying Thriller

"Band of Brothers meets The DaVinci Code. Brian Moreland weaves together the best elements of military, supernatural and religious conspiracy genres, staking out a new territory all his own.” —T.L. Hines, author of Waking Lazarus

"A smashing debut of a major new talent. Equal parts horror story and spine-jangling thriller. An adventure not to be missed!" —James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of Map of Bones and Black Order